First of all Norton is worse than a lot of viruses lol. You could not pay me to put Norton on my PC.

Second a VPN does not protect against viruses. If you need one I have had good service from Nord VPN when I used one in the past.

Originally posted by bossman150:

First of all Norton is worse than a lot of viruses lol. You could not pay me to put Norton on my PC.

Second a VPN does not protect against viruses. If you need one I have had good service from Nord VPN when I used one in the past.

I know, thats why i'm leaving windows defender to the virus fighting but i am skeptical if it will do a good job. I only want the VPN to bypass all the ID stuff that could come to my country.

Shop around, I paid about £20 for BitDefender for a year and I paid just over £60 for 2 years of Nord VPN.

If all you do is game you do not need an AV at all. Get a laptop stock AV on that and do web stuff there.

Surfshark anyone? Been thinking about it. Nice VPN + AV for 2.29 euros a month (in my country) + 3 months free.

Makes sense to me. Especially since the consensus is that Windows Defender is up to the job of being a decent antivirus basically everybody on Windows gets to save money on antivirus software and not pay for it, so you might have been wasting your money to begin with. VPN's as far as I know there are no good free ones, so you do have to pay for that if you want to use one.

Look around for discount codes for MalwareBytes Premium. That along with Windows Defender would work very well enough. What could also help is a subscription to AdGuard (works on WinOS, Apple and Android devices) and can block ads in Win10/11, even the ads normally shown within many Microsoft Store Apps, such as the MS Westher app for example.

VPN don't really help and unless it's a good one like NORS, you're wasting your time.

If you surf and game mainly from a single ISP (like at your home location) look at setting up a Pi-hole using as Raspberry Pi. As a means of better router filtering and blocking. Configure your Gateway/Router better and manually change the IPV4 and IPV6 DNS

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Look around for discount codes for MalwareBytes Premium. That along with Windows Defender would work very well enough. What could also help is a subscription to AdGuard (works on WinOS, Apple and Android devices) and can block ads in Win10/11, even the ads normally shown within many Microsoft Store Apps, such as the MS Westher app for example.

VPN don't really help and unless it's a good one like NORS, you're wasting your time.

If you surf and game mainly from a single ISP (like at your home location) look at setting up a Pi-hole using as Raspberry Pi. As a means of better router filtering and blocking. Configure your Gateway/Router better and manually change the IPV4 and IPV6 DNS

malwarebytes is peddled around here a lot but the detection scores leave a lot to be desired

Yeah, just get a VPN.

I haven't used an antivirus for like, 2 years now. Maybe longer. Well, not one that's paid for.

On Windows, Windows Defender was plenty capable. The Firewalls worked fine too without needing another one.

Not sure why a VPN relates at all TBH. They do two different things. I use Nord VPN though, it works fine.

Here on Linux, anti-virus' aren't as relevant. Just make sure you don't run anything sketchy and you are usually pretty good.

Originally posted by Chaosolous:

...Not sure why a VPN relates at all TBH. They do two different things. I use Nord VPN though, it works fine....

Not trying to be all up in OP's business, but the "age verification in some countries" might mean that he does specifically require the functionality of a VPN for navigation of some web sites and the only way around that is a VPN sometimes so if it's a matter of paying than it is a legit question to ask whether he can just stop paying for an antivirus so that he can pay for a VPN, even if the VPN itself isn't for security purposes but functionality and access. This is what I'm thinking.

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Originally posted by Chaosolous:

...Not sure why a VPN relates at all TBH. They do two different things. I use Nord VPN though, it works fine....

Not trying to be all up in OP's business, but the "age verification in some countries" might mean that he does specifically require the functionality of a VPN for navigation of some web sites and the only way around that is a VPN sometimes so if it's a matter of paying than it is a legit question to ask whether he can just stop paying for an antivirus so that he can pay for a VPN, even if the VPN itself isn't for security purposes but functionality and access. This is what I'm thinking.

Yep

if you are concerned about security which lead you to purchasing norton consider virtual machines for any of your shenanigans online

windows sandbox is one of the easiest to put in your daily routine due to how fast it starts

you can enable windows sandbox by going to start and typing turn windows features on or off then selecting windows sandbox and windows update will gather the files and ask for restart afterwards you search windows sandbox in start and i would advise just adding it to your taskbar for convenience

note windows sandbox is volatile what this means you close it it is wiped out of existence and a new instance is created when you launch it again

just a few things do not log into accounts or banks or whatever on a vm that is only for the host unless you actually use hyperv which can also be enabled from the turn windows features on or off menu or use vmware/virtualbox

just a note virtual machines are not a guarantee nothing can get to the host but it is pretty close to it most of the past vulnerabilities involve gpu acceleration but that isn't the biggest vulnerability and this counts for the host aswel it is user error

other then that if you notice someone got into your vm delete it or close it on the sandbox as soon as someone is actually in the vm then they might be able to get outside of it

this is also why you see security focused channels on youtube nope the f out when they notice someone in their vm's

does mean that say you visit a site that infects your pc with a infostealer that you as long as you followed the safety rules of not adding any accounts would have nothing to grab note as far as i know windows defender still reacts to late when it comes to infostealers giving you a false sense of security because it detected it problem is the data is already sent they are exploiting how windows defender detects infections

also there is a windows defender bypass script on github that still works so ehm yeah

lastly use virustotal.com and if you want more info https://any.run/ before considering running anything you got from the web that aint from trusted sites

tools for seeing what your system is actually doing : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sysinternals-suite

I paid £40 for a 5 year, 10 device vpn of adguard vpn.

When it comes to a quality antivirus, you really want application control. Not only is it faster, but it gives you more insight and protection. I would suggest sometime like BitDefender or MalwareBytes, etc... if paying for it. As a freebee, SpyBot - Seek and Destroy. It's more than just virus definition detections you are after... Microsoft Windows can do that with it's crappy easy to bypass Defender. It's being able to see and control what an app/game will do upon your system... safe guard your payment gateways... detect spam and phishing... and even remove ransomware lockouts. Ideally it adds a firewall too.

VPNs are an additional stage, but not the same deal. That might add some privacy and block the adware... but it won't stop a virus or ransomware. Most viruses are less destructive these days and more on the stealth, people in BotNets, Miners or similar don't even really know, except that their PC runs really slow.